Fast Track to Solaris 10 Adoption: Dynamic Tracing
Compatibility Issues
Please click on a question below or download a pdf version.
- How does DTrace work with third-party kernel modules like the Veritas VM/VXFS or third-party drivers?
- Does DTrace work on x86?
- I've only just begun learning DTrace. Does it have utility in distributed computing environments such as Berkeley Lab's Netlogger?
- Does DTrace work inside a Solaris virtualization environment?
- Will any of the standard performance tools, such as SAR, be re-written to make use of DTrace as a back-end data provider?
Q: How does DTrace work with third-party kernel modules like the Veritas VM/VXFS or third-party drivers?
A: The instrumentation methodology that DTrace uses doesn't rely on any modifications to underlying source code. So DTrace can instrument kernel modules that it has never seen before — including Veritas VxVM/VxFS, etc.
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Q: Does DTrace work on x86?
A: DTrace is fully functional on both SPARC and x86 platforms. And most of our development (and about 99 percent of our public demos) is on our x86-based Solaris laptops.
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Q: I've only just begun learning DTrace. Does it have utility in distributed computing environments such as Berkeley Lab's Netlogger?
A: NetLogger and DTrace are largely complementary. NetLogger lets you know that you have a problem on a specific machine; DTrace allows you to resolve the root-cause of that problem.
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Q: Does DTrace work inside a Solaris virtualization environment?
A: At present, DTrace doesn't work inside of Zones (Solaris Grid Containers). However, from the global zone, you can run DTrace to trace processes in any zone or see interactions between zones.
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Q: Will any of the standard performance tools, such as SAR, be re-written to make use of DTrace as a back-end data provider?
A: SAR and the standard performance tools are really more performance monitors — they indicate that you have a problem. DTrace allows you to deep-dive to resolve that problem. So they're complementary technologies.
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